PATIENCE, or SOLITAIRE as it is known in the US and Canada, is a
genre of card games that can be played by a single player. Patience
games can also be played in a head-to-head fashion with the winner
selected by a scoring scheme.

In the US, the term solitaire is often used specifically to refer to
solitaire with cards, while in other countries solitaire specifically
refers to peg solitaire . Both Solitaire and Patience are sometimes
used to refer specifically to the Klondike form of Patience.

The purpose of Patience generally involves manipulating a layout of
cards with a goal of sorting them in some manner. It is possible to
play the same games competitively (often a head to head race) and
cooperatively.

Patience games typically involve dealing cards from a shuffled deck
into a prescribed arrangement on a tabletop, from which the player
attempts to reorder the deck by suit and rank through a series of
moves transferring cards from one place to another under prescribed
restrictions. Some games allow for the reshuffling of the deck(s),
and/or the placement of cards into new or "empty" locations. In the
most familiar, general form of Patience, the object of the game is to
build up four blocks of cards going from ace to king in each suit,
taking cards from the layout if they appear on the table.

There is a vast array of variations on the patience theme, using
either one or more decks of cards, with rules of varying complexity
and skill levels. Many of these have been converted to electronic form
and are available as computer games . Examples of variants on the
familiar Patience theme that may be played with an ordinary pack of
cards include Bisley and Prince Albert. Basic forms of Klondike
solitaire and
FreeCell come with every version of Microsoft Windows
from
Windows 3.0 (though
FreeCell was introduced in
Windows 95Windows 95 ) to
Windows 7Windows 7 . Ever since the release of
Windows 8Windows 8 ,
Windows Store offers
six unique card games which can be downloaded for free from in the
form of the Collection . There are also many applications for Android
and iOS .

HISTORY

The game is most likely German or Scandinavian in origin. The game
became popular in France in the early 19th Century reaching England
and America in the latter half. The earliest known recording of a game
of patience occurred in 1783 in the German game anthology Das neue
Königliche L'Hombre-Spiel. Before this, there were no literary
mentions of such games in large game compendiums such as Charles
Cotton 's The Compleat Gamester (1674) and Abbé Bellecour's Academie
des Jeux (1674). Klondike is a widely known form of card
solitaire.

Patience was first mentioned in literature shortly after cartomantic
layouts were developed circa 1765, suggesting a connection between the
two. This theory is supported by the name of the game in Danish and
Norwegian, kabal(e). An 1895 account describes a variant of the game
exclusively used for cartomancy.

The first collection of patience card games in the English language
is attributed to Lady Adelaide Cadogan through her Illustrated Games
of Patience, published in about 1870 and reprinted several times.
Other collections quickly followed such as Patience by E. D. Cheney
(1869), Amusement for Invalids by Annie B. Henshaw (1870), and later
Dick's Games of Patience, published by
Dick and Fitzgerald . Other
books about patience written towards the end of the 19th century were
by H. E. Jones (a.k.a. Cavendish), Angelo Lewis (a.k.a. Professor
Hoffman), Basil Dalton, Ernest Bergholt, and Mary Whitmore Jones.